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“You aren’t the most gifted liar in the universe. And then, you argued very strongly for Anglesey’s scheme, this sending down the other pseudos. More strongly than a newcomer should.”

“I told you, I want his attention focused elsewhere when—”

“Do you want it that badly?” snapped Viken.

Cornelius was still for a minute. Then he sighed and leaned back.

“All right,” he said. “I shall have to trust your discretion. I wasn’t sure, you see, how any of you old-time station personnel would react. So I didn’t want to blabber out my speculations, which may be wrong. The confirmed facts, yes, I will tell them; but I don’t wish to attack a man’s religion with a mere theory.”

Viken scowled. “What the devil do you mean?”

Cornelius puffed hard on his cigar; its tip waxed and waned like a miniature red demon star. “This Jupiter Five is more than a research station,” he said gently. “It is a way of life, is it not? No one would come here for even one hitch unless the work was important to him. Those who re-enlist, they must find something in the work, something which Earth with all her riches cannot offer them. No?”

“Yes,” answered Viken. It was almost a whisper. “I didn’t think you would understand so well. But what of it?”

“Well, I don’t want to tell you, unless I can prove it, that maybe this has all gone for nothing. Maybe you have wasted your lives and a lot of money, and will have to pack up and go home.”

Viken’s long face did not flicker a muscle. It seemed to have congealed. But he said calmly enough, “Why?”

“Consider Joe,” said Cornelius. “His brain has as much capacity as any adult human’s. It has been recording every sense datum that came to it, from the moment of ‘birth’—maldng a record in itself, in its own cells, not merely in Anglesey’s physical memory bank up here. Also, you know, a thought is a sense datum, too. And thoughts are not separated into neat little railway tracks; they form a continuous field. Every time Anglesey is in rapport with Joe, and thinks, the thought goes through Joe’s synapses as well as his own—and every thought carries its own associations, and every associated memory is recorded. Like if Joe is building a hut, the shape of the logs might remind Anglesey of some geometric figure, which in turn would remind him of the Pythagorean theorem—”

“I get the idea,” said Viken in a cautious way. “Given time, Joe’s brain will have stored everything that ever was in Ed’s.”

“Correct. Now, a functioning nervous system with an engrammatic pattern of experience, in this case a nonhuman nervous system—isn’t that a pretty good definition of a personality?”

“I suppose so, Good Lord!” Viken jumped. “You mean Joe is— taking over?”

“In a way. A subtle, automatic, unconscious way.” Cornelius drew a deep breath and plunged into it. “The pseudojovian is so nearly perfect a life-form: your biologists engineered into it all the experience gained from nature’s mistakes in designing us. At first, Joe was only a remote-controlled biological machine. Then Anglesey and Joe became two facets of a single personality. Then, oh, very slowly, the stronger, healthier body… more amplitude to its thoughts.

do you see? Joe is becoming the dominant side. Like this business of sending down the other pseudos—Anglesey only thinks he has logical reasons for wanting it done. Actually, his ‘reasons’ are mere rationalizations for the instinctive desires of the Joe facet.

“Anglesey’s subconscious must comprehend the situation, in a dim reactive way; it must feel his human ego gradually being submerged by the steamroller force of Joe’s instincts and Joe’s wishes. It tries to defend its own identity, and is swatted down by the superior force of Joe’s own nascent subconscious.

“I put it crudely,” he finished in an apologetic tone, “but it will account for that oscifiation in the K tubes.”

Viken nodded, slowly, like an old man. “Yes, I see it,” he answered. “The alien environment down there … the different brain

structure. .… Good God! Ed’s being swallowed up in Joe! The puppet master is becoming the puppet!” He looked ifi.